Juan Antonio Llorente

Juan Antonio Llorente, portrayed by Goya between 1810 and 1811

Prefecturas of Spain (1810).

Juan Antonio Llorente (born March 30, 1756 , Rincón de Soto , La Rioja , † February 7, 1823 , Madrid ) was a Spanish scholar, politician and churchman. He was one of the first historians to study the history of the Inquisition .

Life

Juan Antonio Llorente was ordained a priest in 1779 and received a doctorate in canon law the following year . In 1785 he went to the court in Madrid as executor of the will of the Duchess of Sotomayor, the first lady-in-waiting and vice chambermaid of the queen. Here he was soon appointed Commissioner of the Santo Oficio and Extraordinary Secretary of the Court Inquisition. In 1790 he was appointed canon of Calahorra , but initially remained at court as a literary censor. In 1793, the Inquisitor General Manuel Abad y la Sierra commissioned him to prepare an expert report on the procedure of the Santo Oficio. In this study, Llorente criticized the Inquisition's approach and called for its reform. When his client left office, Llorente had to give up this project. He left his manuscript in 1797 Melchor Gaspar de Jovellanos , who used it as a source for his Representación al Rey sobre el Tribunal de la Inquisición . Llorente was a follower of Urqijos and thus also of the Jansenists . When the Jansenists were persecuted after Urquijo's fall in 1801, Llorente also got into trouble. Inquisitor General Ramón de Arce charged him with treason of the Santo Oficio, sentenced to one month of house arrest and the loss of his title as commissioner and secretary of the Court Inquisition.

During the abdication of Bayonne in 1808, he presented Napoleon with a text in which he proposed secularizing the clergy and dissolving the ecclesiastical orders. This gave his political career a boost, he became a member of the National Assembly, which Napoleon's brother Joseph Bonaparte elected as José I to be king and which accepted the constitution of Bayonne. Llorente was a leading figure among friends of France and Bonapartists, he was appointed State Councilor for Church Affairs. He defended the regalism of the new regime in two writings. In July 1813 he had to flee to France, where he settled in Paris in 1814. He tried unsuccessfully to achieve that an amnesty for Ferdinand VII should also include his person. From 1817 to 1818 he published his main work, the four-volume Histoire critique de l'inquisition d'Espagne , which was later translated into several languages. This work received heavy criticism from supporters of the Restoration , while liberal critics and leading European historians exuberantly praised it.

When the constitution of 1812 came into force after the Spanish Revolution of 1820 , Llorente placed himself at the service of the new, liberal Spanish state. For this reason, and because the French authorities noticed his activities in the secret society of the Charbonnerie , he was expelled from France. Llorente went to Madrid. Here his intrigues led to the expulsion of the papal nuncio from Spain on February 22nd, 1822 . On February 3, 1823, he obtained the approval of the court to reorganize the situation of the clergy.

Works

• El recluta gallego , 1782.
• Preferencia de los embajadores de España a los de Francia en los Concilios generales en la corte de Roma y en otras asambleas diplomáticas , 1786.
• Monumento romano, descubierto en Calahorra día 4 de marzo de 1788 , Madrid, (1789)
• Discursos histórico-canónicos sobre el origen y naturaleza de los beneficios patrimoniales del obispado de Calahorra , 1790.
• Disertación sobre el sitio en que estuvo la antigua Segóbriga , 1790.
• Historia de la emigración de los clérigos franceses a España , 1793, perdida.
• Discurso sobre la navegación del Ebro , 1797.
• Discurso sobre calificadores del Santo Oficio , 1797.
• Discursos sobre el orden de procesar en los tribunales de Inquisición , 1797.
• Plan económico para extinguir anualmente vales reales y acreditar los existentes , 1799.
• Noticias históricas de las tres provincias vascongadas , 1805.
• Reglamento para la Iglesia Española 1808.
• Colección diplomática sobre las dispensas matrimoniales y otros puntos de disciplina eclesiástica (1809)
• Disertación sobre el poder que los reyes españoles ejercieron hasta el siglo duodécimo en la división de obispados y otros puntos conexos de disciplina eclesiástica (1810).
• Memoria histórica sobre cuál ha sido la opinión nacional de España acerca del tribunal de la Inquisición , 1812.
• Eurico , tragedy.
• Discurso sobre la opinión nacional de España acerca de la guerra con Francia , Valencia, 1812.
• Observaciones sobre las dinastías de España , Valencia, 1812.
• Carta crítica sobre si el templo del Pilar de Zaragoza fue construido fuera o dentro de las murallas romanas de la ciudad , 1812.
• Defensa canónica y política de don Juan Antonio Llorente contra injustas acusaciones de fingidos crímenes; trascendental en varios puntos al mayor número de españoles refugiados en Francia , 1816.
• Carta de don Juan Antonio Llorente a M. Claussel de Coussergues sobre la Inquisición de España , 1817.
• Histoire critique de l'inquisition d'Espagne (1817-1818).
  • German: Critical History of the Spanish Inquisition. Translated and accompanied by notes by JK Höck. 4 volumes. Gmünd, Ritter, 1819–1822

Web links

• Works in the web archive